Firis looked down, but Anna could sense his anger. At the moment she didn't care, not after having spent two days riding in dust out of obligation to Brill... and then to have some...
medieval... idiot... insult her almost before she'd seated herself.
"You might try the wine," Alasia suggested. "It's not quite vinegar." Barjim's consort smiled.
Brill took the flagon and poured some for Anna and then himself, while Anna broke off a chunk of bread and ladled the stew across it.
She looked back at Fins. He was still seething, and he glared at her, his dark eyes burning.
She thought she caught the word "Bitch. .."
Anna looked at his goblet which was wooden, like hers and the others, and concentrated on holding image, words, and melody.
"Goblet there, goblet fair, flame bright in this air."
The goblet blazed into a pillar of fire, illuminating the entire room.
Firis fell backward over the bench, carrying Dekas and Sepko with him.
"Lady Anna.. . was that. not a bit.. . much?" asked Barjim, standing.
"No." Anna almost didn't care. "This isn't my world. I've ridden across a damned desert for two days because-", She broke off. No sense in admitting her obligations. "I've been shot because I support you, and I don't have to take insults from half educated idiots who don't even know me." She glared at Firis. "You have no right to be angry at me, and you have no right to insult me or Lord Brill."
"If you were a man, I'd challenge you," hissed Firis, scrambling off the floor as the light from the burning goblet died down into a low flame, his hand on the hilt of his blade.
"Well. . . Lady Anna?" asked Barjim.
Anna rose. "Perhaps I should go. By your leave?"
Alasia looked at Barjim, mouthing no.
"I think not." Barjim turned to Firis. "I'm not the brightest lord who ever lived. You know that." He laughed. "You all know that." His face turned somber. "Whose side are you on, Firis?
It's strange. I finally get a sorceress with power, and she's not in the fort a glass, and you want to kill her."
"You know, she could have turned you into flame as quickly as that cup," Alasia added.
Anna bowed to the captain. "I apologize, Captain Firis. I am tired. I am not used to riding so far, and the past weeks have been hard. Very hard."
Fins's eyes flicked from Barjim to Anna to Alasia and back to Anna. "You obviously need not apologize, Lady Anna."
"Lord Barjim needs all his captains," Anna said. "And I am truly sorry to have upset... this group."
"I would like to point out one matter," Alasia added, turning to Firis. "When you were wounded at Cheor a spring ago, how would you have felt if Captain Dekas there had suggested you were useless?"
Firis frowned.
"It is not obvious, but Lady Anna took a full war arrow through both shoulder and hand less than three weeks ago, from the dark ones. She has made quite an effort to be here." Alasia spread her hands.
"The dark ones?" asked Fins.
"They are dead," Brill said. "Lady Anna also deflected that arrow barehanded, or she would be dead."
That was an exaggeration, but it would serve, and Anna did not think a correction was in order.
Firis bowed his head. "I apologize."
"I am sorry," Anna said. "I really am."
"Sit down, both of you, and eat," ordered Barjim. "I need you both, and half the problem is you're both starving."
"Might I ask for another cup?" asked Fins sheepishly, with a grin.
Anna avoided a deep sigh of relief as she sat, her legs trembling. She'd botched that, and without Alasia and Barjim, she'd have been in real trouble.
"Eat," commanded Brill quietly, "or you'll fall over. You're pale as snow."
Her head was pounding, and her vision was almost double, but she managed to take one mouthful, then another. Before she was quite sure how it had happened, her wooden platter was empty, and she found herself reaching for the bread.
Brill passed the stew kettle back to her.
While she couldn't quite believe she was still hungry, Anna took seconds, trying to listen as she did.
"We're still not at full strength," offered the thin, almost dapper man across from Sepko. His iron-gray hair glinted in the candlelight.
"We had a messenger from Lord Jecks this afternoon, Rohar," replied Barjim. "He will be here with his levies in less than two days."
"Will the dark ones wait that long, ser?" asked Dekas, after taking a deep swallow of the amber wine.
"Oh, they will wait. They will." The Lord of Defalk refilled his goblet.
"How many does Jecks have?"
"Twentyscore, or more, and some good archers."
"Solid man, Jecks is."
Anna began to have trouble listening after that, just trying to keep from yawning and falling asleep at the table. She shouldn't have had the goblet of wine, not as tired as she was.
By the time she and Brill returned to the upper level, both Palian and Liende were asleep and snoring.
"Good night, Lady Anna. You made quite an impression."
"Not a good one, I'm afraid." Anna yawned in spite of herself.
"Quite good, I think. It will help morale."
"What?" She yawned again. "That I insulted a captain, flamed a goblet, and made an ass out of myself?"
"You showed spirit, and they need that more than anything."
"Good night," Anna said, closing the door. She managed to get her trousers and boots off, but that was all, before she sank onto the pallet.
33.
Anna stepped around a clump of manure as she followed Brill through and around the groups of armsmen and toward the steps leading up to the northeast corner watch-tower. Despite the dust and dry climate, the fort was beginning to smell-the result of too many animals, too many people, and inadequate sanitation.
The smells didn't help her throbbing head, probably the result of bad wine, sorcery the night before on an empty stomach, and exhaustion. Sleeping on the raised pallet had been better than on the ground, but not much. A breakfast of bread, hard cheese, and dried apples had helped, but not enough. So had nearly a bottle of cold water, but the spell to clean and chill it had renewed her headache.
"You need to see how this battle will develop," Brill said over his shoulder as he trudged up the narrow steps. Carrying the mandolin, she followed. Somewhere, she needed to find a corner to practice, even to run through some vocalises. Could she sing separate lines of a spell without triggering the effect?... How far apart?
There was still so much she didn't know... so much.
As she reached the top of the steps, she stopped by the weathered, iron-bound door in the side of the tower and asked, "Can you practice a spell in phrases-without creating something?"
"Serento used to do that. I never have. I'll speak the words, or sing the pitches with nonsense syllables."
Anna pursed her lips. "Could we try that with harmony?"
"Not now." He shook his head. "If you had come sooner...
Anna doubted that somehow.
"The players will be here." The sorcerer gestured to a space no more than five yards square on the western side of the watchtower, protected by the tower itself on the east, and the crenelated wall on the north. There were no protecting walls or rails on the inside, and the drop-off was more than twenty feet. "And I'll stand here."
Anna nodded. Where should she stand? She st ill didn't exactly know what she was going to do, even though Brill acted as though she did, and she needed to practice, especially given his clear aversion to considering anything resembling harmony or joint spellsinging.
After easing toward the outside parapet and stepping into the shade of the tower, Anna took off her hat, blotting away the sweat that had collected where the leather inside band had pressed against her hair and skin.
"See anything?" The low voice came from above, and Anna looked up, but could see nothing except the crenelations of the watchtower.
"Nothing, except some dust on the road to Mencha." A laugh followed. "I'm in no hurry to see anything coming -down from Ebra."
"You said it."
Anna's lips quirked. Like the sentries above her, she wasn't in any hurry.for the Ebrans, or whoever, to show up.
"Where would be best for you?" asked the sorcerer.
"I don't know. I need to practice."
He nodded, and half turned to the west, almost as though he had not heard her, slowly walking along the parapet, then stopping, and leaning forward on the bricks of the wall, his eyes turned to the west.
Anna put on her hat and followed him out of the tower's shadow, slowly, halting beside him.
"Less than ten leagues, and Loiseau might be a world away."
She looked westward, the morning sun at her back. The road climbed up the low hill they had come down the night before and then seemed to vanish.
"Sometimes it seems that way with lots of things," she answered.
"Sometimes."
They stood silently for a time, and Anna could feel the sweat beginning to collect under the brim of her hat again, and her hand went to the water bottle at her belt as her eyes studied the barren terrain. Only a few stunted and twisted pines, scattered cactus, some sagebrushlike bushes in the hills, and a few patches of browned grass. Everything else was rock, sand, or bare dirt.
The fort seemed to be almost in the middle of nowhere. The last hut or hovel Anna had seen had to have been a league back toward Mencha. The thinnest of dry streambeds ran along one side of the road that twisted into the mountains.
The eastern gates of the fort were closed, and the wooden span removed, so that the road ended on the eastern side of the dry moat that encircled the entire fort. The western gates were closed, but the bridge spans were in place. The moat was wider on the north and south sides of the fort, nearly a hundred yards, and much deeper on the eastern side, with precisely fitted brick or stone walls.
Anna studied the approach to the pass again. "Why didn't you build the fort farther uphill? It looks like this ridge wouldn't be that hard to ride up and circle away from the fort."
"The slopes are sandy, and they slow down mounts." Brill said. "The ramparts are here because the ground seems solid, and because there aren't any higher cliffs that the dark ones could shake down on the walls. Or use to fire arrows into the fort."
Anna supposed everything was a compromise, even warfare, and she nodded slowly as she looked farther to the northwest, catching sight of a patch of blue, a small lake that seemed so incongruous in the red-soiled and dry hills, nestled almost at the northern base of the long ridgelike hill that ran to within a hundred yards of the fort's walls.
A lake? Why in the middle of nowhere?
Then she recalled the comments about water gates, and studied the regularity of the moat on the east side. She studied the moat more closely, finally discovering a circular stone opening, more than ten feet high, on the south side of the northwest corner. She pointed. "How well will it work?"
"Well enough, while the water lasts." Brill shrugged. "Even underground, there's not much here anymore." He straightened. "I need to gather the players together. We'll be practicing in the bigger room."
"I think I'll stay up here. It's cooler." She gestured toward the shaded side of the watchtower behind her.
"For now." Brill turned.
After the sorcerer left, Anna sat in the shady corner and began to try to work out some form of chording for her battle hymn. She knew the melody well enough, but trying to develop chords from scratch was another thing. She'd always had music to refer to, and so far, she hadn't seen any on Erde. If it existed, it was well hidden.. . for good reason.
She eased the two folded papers from the belt wallet, unfolded them, and laid them on the bricks beside her.
The mandolin was out of tune, and the tuning pegs wouldn't hold unless she jammed them sideways.
She ran through several vocalises, but her voice was tired, and she felt clumsy, even as she kept at it trying to get clear, get warmed up.
Then, when she picked up the mandolin again, her fingers fumbled on the strings, and her mind skittered over the words.
"I have loosed the fateful lightning so the darkling ones will die, My songs will strike them ..."
She paused and shook her head. It was all so insane.
What was she doing? Sitting in a brick fort in the middle of a desert, trying to compose or arrange a song that would kill people she didn't know, except that those people had already tried io kill her.
How long she spent, she didn't know, only that her voice was tired, and her fingers ached, and that the sun had almost reached noon and taken the last vestige of shade when she folded up her would-be spells and started down the steps, trying to ignore the low voices from the watchtower.